AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Silver Award by Pocket Gamer...

Sometimes companies hit on brilliant concepts just by combining two things that are excellent in their own right. Reese, to cite the classic example, hit a gold mine with peanut butter and chocolate. Developer Com2Us has pulled off a similar feat with Sniper Vs. Sniper: Online, which combines Where’s Waldo and a murder sim.

Okay, so it’s not the first sniping game in existence (and it’s hardly murder when the guy’s trying to put a hole in your head), but when we’re having this much fun, we’re not worrying over the details.

The basic gameplay goes like this: you’re presented with a wide shot of a very detailed scene, packed full of shadowy places an enemy might hide. Tapping the screen once magnifies the view with binoculars; tapping again zooms in further by switching to your sniper scope. The tapping works brilliantly, and it always zooms exactly where you’re trying to aim.

Peepin’ Tom.

Once you’re zoomed in, you use tilt controls to further adjust your view. Tilt up, down, left, and right to search for baddies or to sharpen your aim for the hallowed headshot. Unfortunately, tilt aiming in this game is not quite the intuitive experience we wish it was. Don’t get us wrong: it definitely works, and you can become quite good at it. The problem is that sometimes the scope doesn’t move with quite the precision or speed you’d like it to.

Another shortcoming is that there are only six maps for your sniping pleasure. The maps are very well-designed and increase in difficulty at a steady pace, but we would have liked to see more for added replay value.

Not that you’ll be starved for things to do. You can play each map several ways. There’s a campaign mode, which tells a story and has you kill around 30 enemies per level. There’s one-on-one, in which you go several rounds against an AI-controlled sniper until one of your health bars runs out. Lastly, there’s a special mission mode, which has you complete five objectives, such as “destroy all 20 potted plants in 90 seconds.” Completing all special missions on any stage grants you upgraded equipment.

This may sting a bit.

If you run out of missions– which will take several hours and will make a master marksman out of you– online play will be waiting. In this mode you can link up with one person at a time, either against each other or cooperatively against numerous AI enemies. We loved the thrill of one vs. one: the excitement of seeking someone out and blasting them in the head before they can do the same to you is not recommended for the faint of heart. It’s a grand old time. If they had included online deathmatches with multiple people, we would have been in love.

Sniper Vs. Sniper: Online is a tense shooting sim that’ll have you on the edge of your seat as you hunt down scores of distant enemies. It may not be perfect, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. Now hop online and find us for some one on one.

Peering down a scope at your enemy is about as second nature to long-time gamers as jumping to collect coins. While there are already dozens (if not hundreds) of hunting/sniping games on the App Store, how many of them can boast online multiplayer?

Here’s how the multiplayer battles work in sniper vs sniper. Logging in to Com2Us’s servers, you’ll challenge another player and select one of the game’s 2D environments: building, village, forest, temple, or city. These range in difficulty from a nearby building with nice wide windows to peer in, to a cluttered skyscraper where your foe will only appear to be a few pixels high.

When the round starts, you’ll pick up your binoculars by tapping once on the screen, and start scanning intensely for your enemy. You’re looking for a figure in black, who is also looking through binoculars (or if you’re too late, the scope of his gun). Once you find him, you tap again to bring up your sniper rifle, and hopefully shoot him before he shoots you.

Headshots do more damage, and the snipers move positions after either one gets a hit. As your life bar ticks down, things get much more intense. This intensity is also helped by the broad hint that appears if you were the last one shot (a wide circle appears telling you where the enemy is hiding). Rewarding the last person to get shot might frustrate some players, though, and we’re uncertain if this option can be turned off.

We liked the online battles, but maybe not as much as we were expecting to. Besides careful aiming through the tilt controls, most of the game requires squinting intensely at the screen looking for your target. It’s hard to spot the 2D enemy sniper amid a jumble of background graphics.

Sniper vs Sniper also lets you play cooperatively with a friend to take down teams of snipers, which is what the main game is like solo. While we love online play and think it’s very important for iPhone games, we enjoyed the game’s offline modes a bit more.

In each stage, you can choose a 1 on 1 offline sniper battle, or take on a team of terrorists like in the game Silent Scope, but without the storyline. Also, there are five bonus challenges for each stage as well, which reward you with new gear if you beat them all. Our favorite involved picking off stray cats through a sniper rifle loaded with tranquilizer darts. It’s so they can get off the streets, so there’s nothing sadistic about it!

We definitely enjoyed Sniper vs Sniper’s offline challenges. The rest of the game may actually appeal more to the hidden object crowd, or at least the ones with a membership in the NRA. Look for our review after the game launches in the next few weeks.

It’s our sincere hope that Sniper vs. Sniper is not as bumbling as the Spy vs. Spy comics from Mad Magazine. We prefer our hired guns to be professionals, not cartoons. After all, the idea of an intense, frantic sweep of the scenery through a scope sounds like a lot of fun, especially online, and we’d expect this concept to be given some serious treatment.

To that end, we’ve got some newly-released screenshots and a trailer for Sniper vs. Sniper Online. If the final game delivers online sniper battles with the same ease as Com2Us’s previous online game Homerun Battle, we’ll be very impressed.

We’re told that Sniper vs Sniper will have a 6-mission single player mode, upgradeable gear, 5 environments, and includes a friends list and online chat.

Enjoy these screens and video, and we’ll try to get you more on Sniper vs Sniper Online soon. The full game comes out in October.

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